


A Sinner Twice

by EllieMurasaki



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Episode: s02e01 In My Time of Dying, Episode: s04e15 Death Takes a Holiday, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-02-14
Updated: 2010-02-14
Packaged: 2017-10-07 18:10:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 630
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/67803
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EllieMurasaki/pseuds/EllieMurasaki
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>If he won't let her take him, he'll be worse off than she, and he knows it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Sinner Twice

**Author's Note:**

> Title from Metallica's "The Four Horsemen" (deliverance for you for sure, now there's nothing you can do).

She likes this young man; there's a brightness to his soul.

It figures that he sees her and, even if he doesn't know what she is, is willing to fight her. She isn't actually capable of overpowering him, so she flees, pauses to collect herself. There's a young woman comatose in a nearby room, the of-course-I'm-trustworthy sort of pretty to human eyes. She thinks back to the last woman she conversed with, and she borrows that woman's name and mannerisms and the comatose woman's face to wear as a mask while she speaks to this man.

He's determined to wake up, to be alive again. She already knows that can't happen—she wouldn't have looked at him otherwise—and no angels have come to lift him up nor hellhounds to drag him down, he hasn't attached himself to a zygote before it sprouts its own soul, so he's fair game. She's telling him that what will be will be and can't be fought when she hears a code blue over the intercom; she's been around hospitals more than long enough to know what that means. He goes to investigate; she slips her mask and beats him there, and oh, this girl has a lovely soul.

He sees her. He must know what she is, now.

She knows what he is, too. She leaves him alone while they both digest. He'll come to find her.

He does, and she lays her trap. It's the same one that's worked for thousands of others just like him. It's failed for dozens of others just like him, but if he won't let her take him, he'll be worse off than she is and he knows it.

Of course he asks what will happen if she takes him, and of course she won't answer. (She says she can't. They always believe her on this, if on nothing else.)

The game changes.

When she comes back to herself, he's gone.

She doesn't see him again for a few years—hospitals are popular with her kind and she's feeling crowded, and someone has abandoned a territory not so far away, and of course the results are peculiar enough to catch his interest. She doesn't care why the area's reaper-free, only that it leaves space for her, but she's content to refrain from taking the boy until the man and his brother know what's happening. He'll still be there when the man and his brother have left, after all. It's a shame that the man is out of her reach now—she sees the scars of hellhound claws and the brand of an angel's touch on his soul, and she doesn't know which will claim him when next he dies but she certainly doesn't intend to be there when they come for him—

He'll skip town the moment he's satisfied his curiosity, which is good, because otherwise she'd have to go looking for a new hunting ground. She is _not_ staying around someone who is at least three for three on attracting hell's creatures while effectively dead. Though that may be a moot point, because she may well predecease him.

He and his brother free her—why, she isn't sure—and it's only fair to return the favor by freeing them. She thinks about taking the brother, but there are two of them and they've taken steps to ensure they can return to being alive and she is stronger than neither of them. She doesn't hesitate to take the boy, though, or the woman who showed the man and the brother how to be dead-while-alive, or any of the others who would have died in the presence of her deceased relation.

She regrets not being able to take the brothers. Either one would make a fine tasty meal.


End file.
